[mythtv] Re: Propossed change to the ProgLister

J. Donavan Stanley jdonavan at jdonavan.net
Sun May 16 18:12:24 EDT 2004


Bruce Markey wrote:

> J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
>
>> Bruce,
>>
>> Isaac wanted me to run this past you before I committed it.
>>
>> I've modified ProgLister to allow the display to be filtered to 
>> "premium" channels (ones marked as commfree) to make it easier to find 
>
>
> Hey, I thought commfree was for PBS =) but I see from the help
> text in the Channel Editor that it suggests "Useful for premium
> channels like HBO". Still it is a little bit of a leap in the
> terminology and it may be good to clarify that Commercial Free
> and Premium Channel are assumed to be one and the same even though
> they don't really have to be. Any ideas anyone?


Heh I didn't even have PBS when I added that flag.  I started using the 
premium channel terminology when I did the ProgLister changes since it 
that most closely describes the intent.  I supposes I could/should have 
called the flag premium instead. I'm open to using "commercial free" in 
place of "premium" in the ProgLister though I think Premium sounds better.

By the way, this just went to me, or so it appears...  I'm cc'ing the 
-dev list


>> Is this acceptable?
>
> movies & specials worth recording.  In order to do so I added a popup 
> menu that's bound to MENU.  The menu has additional options on it, 
> including the action that was originally bound to MENU "chooseView".  
> The menu is contextual and only displays the options that make sense.
>
> Actually, I like the idea of limiting the view to premium channels.
> A couple observations on this implementation though.
>
> To change, say, category views for a list with havePremiumChannels,
> the key strokes would be M,down,down,M rather than just M. I find
> that when I'm searching there is a very high ratio of pages viewed
> vs items set to record so it would make more sense to have Choose
> Category as the default at the top.


That makes sense to me.  That was my biggest concern with this, 
introducing extra button presses to what had been a single press action.


> The items "Choose a Different Category" and "Show Only Premium
> Channels" act on the view in the list box whereas Record and Edit
> act on the selected item so this mixture seems a little odd. "R"
> SELECT and INFO all directly or indirectly allow setting a show
> to record so I don't think it is necessary to include these options
> here also just because it may be possible to limit the view to just
> the premium channels. Not that they have to be excluded but there
> is no need for more buttons and a mixed context.


I originally had these separated from the others so it was clearer they 
operated on different contexts.  Maybe that would help?

This reminds me, do we really need both EditRecording and EditScheduled 
since EditRecording calls EditScheduled if the recording isn't scheduled?



> The new override menus says "Edit Options" so that may be more
> consistent phrasing than "Edit Recording".


Or maybe "Edit Recording Options" to be completely accurate?


> I chose a title that is only on one premium channel (commfree)
> then pressed M. The popup came up to allow me to choose choose only
> preimum channels which has no value in this context so maybe it
> needs to test to see if there is a mix of premium and non-premium.

 I could probably set a flag after pull the list.


> I also want to pass the buck ,-) to David for the bigger picture
> of views. I like the idea of using MENU, PREVVIEW and NEXTVIEW in
> a consistent way across the interface and hope we can move further
> in that direction. Limiting the items in the list box by premium
> channel is another "view" and adding another method of changing the
> view by adding another popup doesn't feel right.

The problem is that doing it as another view results in double the 
amount of views.  This is more like applying a filter against the 
current view.

> Another approach may be to add a special item at the top of the
> view list like the "<New Phrase>" on the keyword search pages. So
> maybe "<Premium Channels>" or "<All Channels>". Selecting this item
> would stay on the same category, keyword, or whatever but would
> change which channels are included in the view list. There would
> then be no need for an extra popup and all the other button options
> on jdonavan's popup could still be reached through RECORD, SELECT
> or INFO.


The popup menu also helps with usability IMO.  Fewer keys/buttons to 
remember.


> I've attached my changes as a patch if you'd like to try it out.
>
> I've re-attached to make sure we all have it.

And I've re-re-attached it.

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